Clara Moskowitz attempts (as I have in the past) to dispel all of the nutty myths about the new space policy. Probably in futility. Some people will remain either wilfully ignorant, or will continue to lie about it to support their pork.
43 thoughts on “Good Luck With That”
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So only the ignorant or liars have issues with the new “space policy”? Do you include Dr Spudis in that assessment Rand? I really don’t think you do.
The hyperbole, on BOTH sides of this debate, needs to END.
Some people will remain either wilfully ignorant, or will continue to lie about it to support their pork.
Amazingly (to me at least), fanboys will lie about it too.
Cecil Trotter,
I agree 100%. The misrepresentations, hyperbole and naming call needs to end on both sides.
Tom
The Space News piece is laughable spin. It beyond comprehension that adults are expected to give it credence.
So only the ignorant or liars have issues with the new “space policy”?
How did you get that from “Some people will remain either willfully ignorant, or will continue to lie about it to support their pork.”? Seems a little hyperbolic to me. Do you dispute the idea that there are SOME people who are willfully ignorant, or liars motivated by government pork?
Curt, you might also say that *some* people who support Obamaspace are motivated by ego and idelogy.
“Good Luck with That” seems to be an accurate and fit title. The comments here do not look at the facts and reflect simple partisan opinions. I hope that SpaceX and New Space do not get painted with the failure of the Obama regime and it’s leftist policies. These posturings show that the two major parties are not really left or right. They are both looking for their own pork.
It is becoming an aphorism that the Democrats do not believe in free markets below the atmosphere and the Republicans do not believe in free markets above the atmosphere.
I doubt I agree with Obama on 1% of his policies but his space policy is close to reasonable. I find spending another $30+ billion in addition to the $9 billion already spent on Constellation to be a waste of the highest order. We as a nation can no longer afford such waste and such cancellations need to spread to other government programs as well. If a commercial supplier can carry humans to orbit for a far lower cost to the taxpayers than continuing NASA’s Ares/Orion boondoggle, then they should.
So only the ignorant or liars have issues with the new “space policy”?
No.
Opposing Obama’s space policy does not equate supporting continued expenditures on Ares/Orion, as some posts here suggest.
This is part of the hyperbole I referred to, IE lumping everyone into either one of two narrowly defined camps: Some claim or at least infer that one is either in the “NASA business as usual exorbitant spending with little to show for it” camp or the “So long as Ares gets killed I don’t care what else Obama does with space policy” camp.
I support killing Ares and putting the business of LEO access completely in the hands of commercial entities like SpaceX. I also support a firm, tangible, non-LEO national goal for the US human spaceflight program, IE “Moon, Mars and Beyond”. Without the latter I don’t believe the former will survive or at least grow as robustly as it would otherwise.
That doesn’t make me an idiot or a liar.
@Cecil Trotter
That doesn’t make me an idiot or a liar.
You also are not “a porker” at least IMHO. FWIW.
PS — This thread helps reveal why framing FY2011 vs PoR as “either/or” will have bad consequences, long term, for America’s human space efforts
Egads. The comments over there, and here if you count Whittington, are reason enough to stop reading ALL comments to ANY article about NASA or Flex-Path.
I’ll enjoy the articles and skip the comments until CxP is officially buried.
Cecil, if that is your position, then you are not in opposition to Obama’s plan. If you think you are, it is only because you’ve been misled by liars with a hidden agenda (generally the whole ATK centered ICBM-industrial complex).
I am not someone who has ever supported Obama on anything, so accusing me of ideological motivations for supporting his plan for NASA are unfounded. I think this is true of many of its supporters, primarily since his proposal is SO unlike his socialist prescriptions for other areas of the economy. But I am not someone who will refuse to support a policy that merits support simply because of the person proposing it.
Most of the opposition to Obama’s plan that I’ve seen tends to come from people who knee-jerk opposition to anything Obama puts out. It is simply disgusting to see politicians who CLAIM to be republicans who are outing themselves as dyed in the wool space socialists by opposing Obama’s plan either to protect their own pork in their districts, to pay off a campaign contributor (ATK, government employee unions, etc) or simply to oppose Obama for its own sake.
Outside of those three constitutencies, the remaining opponents tend to be outliers with O.D.D.
“The hyperbole, on BOTH sides of this debate, needs to END.”
I agree. There’s been more hyperbole over this issue than over any other issue in the history of mankind….
Wow. Thanks, Cecil, for showing me I’m not alone in my dispositions towards all of this. I like commercialization/privitization but I also would love to see us follow VSE in terms of destination. Maybe it’s not doable at this point, I dunno. I don’t see why VSE has to die with Cx, though. I’m still a fan of NASA-operated lunar bases on the way to a NASA Mars landing. I’d be happy if we could do it by buying the rockets from SpaceX or somebody and maybe even buy the landers and hab modules from Bigelow or something.
Also to Mike Lorrey, for helpful comments. It is hard for me to reconcile this plan with everything else that comes out of this administration, I have a hard time squaring it. initialy I was one of the knee-jerk dissenters, but I’m coming around. I figure either this is the proverbial blind squirrel/broken clock or else maybe O just doesn’t care and is rubber stamping whatever someone else is putting in front of him. I keep looking for a trap door here, though… Heck, maybe he thinks he’s sending us on a fool’s errand that will never pay off, I dunno. I think it will.
One thing that does confuse me a bit, maybe someone could clarify this for me: Doesn’t Cx include a HLV, the Ares V? So we’re scrapping that but then later we’re going to go develop a new/different HLV instead? Why not just finish and keep Ares V? Why/how is the future HLV supposed to do any better (in terms of program execution) than Ares V? And if we’re really believers in commercial, why not just buy Falcon 9H or something instead? Sorry if this has been covered already, I must have missed it.
Why not just finish and keep Ares V?
Because it’s not a particularly good design, and it would be very expensive to both develop and operate. It doesn’t make sense to develop Ares V without developing Ares I (which was a “down payment” on the Ares V development). If you really think that we need a heavy lifter, Shuttle derived or (better yet) growth Atlas or (even better yet) SpaceX’ BFR is a much better way to go.
Bill Dale,
[[[It is becoming an aphorism that the Democrats do not believe in free markets below the atmosphere and the Republicans do not believe in free markets above the atmosphere.]]]
There is nothing free market about “commercial crew”. Is merely replacing the Old Space government contractors with New Space government contractors.
Cecil, Paul Spudis is the Bob Zubrin of the Moon.. nuff said.
Is merely replacing the Old Space government contractors with New Space government contractors.
…and replacing cost-plus with fixed price contracts. That’s huge.
And multiple simultaneous suppliers. That’s also huge.
And she misses the point when it comes to The Gap…
http://quantumg.blogspot.com/2010/06/gap-myth.html
txhsdad wrote:
One thing that does confuse me a bit, maybe someone could clarify this for me: Doesn’t Cx include a HLV, the Ares V? So we’re scrapping that but then later we’re going to go develop a new/different HLV instead? Why not just finish and keep Ares V?
Cost. According to Steve Cook, NASA’s former Ares program mananger, Ares V would cost $40 billion to develop, AFTER spending $35 billion to develop Ares I (since some technology transfers over). In order to develop Ares V without developing Ares I first, it would cost $50 billion.
That is the cost of having NASA develop a Shuttle-derived heavy lift vehicle using cost-plus contracts.
It is hoped that once the Shuttle program is shut down and a new large kerosene engine is developed that a much less expensive HLV could be developed via fixed-price contracts like COTS. Some of us are also hoping that once orbital fuel depots are proven it will become obvious we don’t even need an HLV for any reasonable near-term missions.
Mike
txhsdad wrote:
I like commercialization/privitization but I also would love to see us follow VSE in terms of destination. Maybe it’s not doable at this point, I dunno. I don’t see why VSE has to die with Cx, though.
For the most part, it’s not dying. There is more VSE in the FY11 plan than in Constellation.
Though I think it’s nuts to try to do deep-space operations before mastering cislunar space (inluding lunar landings and bases), I don’t think the BEO parts of either Constellation or the FY11 plan are all that important right now.
Constellation would give us its first lunar landing in 2035. FY11 promises us an asteroid flyby in 2025. Both are so far in the future it just doesn’t matter. The political, economic, and, if the tech demos in FY11 come to fruition, the technological landscape of 2025 and 2035 are going to be so different than today as to make detailed planning for that far in the future meaningless.
Do fuel depots work? Then we don’t need heavy lift. If not, then we do. Does VASIMR or something like it work? If so, that greatly reduces the trip time and thus the radiation shielding necessary for a Martian expedition. Does VASIMR need a nulear power source? Or will advanced solar power do? The answer to those questions will greatly affect where we will be able to afford to go in 2025. Will Bigelow get his orbital habitats to work by 2015? His lunar habitats by 2025? Will Masten be able to develop a lunar lander by then for under $1 billion?
The answer to these questions will drive the timeline, budget, and destinations of our space program in the 2020’s far more than any 90-day study we could possibly do today.
So instead of spending all of our space dollars working towards biannual lunar landings (with no base) starting in 2035, I suggest we get started answering those questions. FY11 does that. Cx does not.
Mike
It’s amazing to me that Ares I/V ended up taking so long and costing so much, since (as far as I understand) the whole point was to use existing shuttle boosters and stuff to build them. I understand the difference between cost plus and fixed fee, but man — it still boggles.
Martijn Meijering, Bennett,
You reading your wishes into”commercial crew”. It may follow the COTS model, it may not. NASA may just lease a single system. We don’t know yet.
But remember the RFP won’t even be out until next year, later if Congress balks so until then we don’t if its multiple winners or fixed price. We don’t even know what the human rating requirements will be until next year. Or who will decide to bid on it.
Whereas we could have had COTS-D in FY2011 under the current direction. And it would have had multiple winners and been fixed priced just as COTS was.
Thomas Matula: “You reading your wishes into”commercial crew”. It may follow the COTS model, it may not. NASA may just lease a single system. We don’t know yet.”
We don’t know how it will turn out, but NASA has given every indication that it will follow the COTS model and involve multiple competitors. For example, from the FY2011 budget proposal:
“These funds will be competed through COTS-like, fixed-price, milestone-based Space Act Agreements that support the development, testing, and demonstration of multiple commercial crew systems. As with the COTS cargo program, some amount of private investment capital will be included as part of any Space Act Agreement and NASA will use this funding to support a range of higher- and lower-programmatic risk systems. Unlike the COTS program, which exclusively funded entirely new and integrated systems (launch vehicles plus capsules), this program will also be open to a broad range of commercial proposals including, but not limited to: human-rating existing launch vehicles, developing spacecraft for delivering crew to the ISS that can be launched on multiple launch vehicles, or developing new high-reliability rocket systems.”
Thomas Matula: “Whereas we could have had COTS-D in FY2011 under the current direction. And it would have had multiple winners and been fixed priced just as COTS was.”
If by the current direction you mean the Ares/Orion POR, I doubt that would have happened. There would have been no money for it. Also, the money for ISS would have been needed by Constellation, so COTS-D would have had no destination by 2015 unless NASA found a huge new source of money. If COTS-D was going to be funded under the POR, it would have happened years ago. Also, if it had happened under Constellation in spite of Constellation’s money problems, it might have been a simple matter of funding SpaceX as an extension of the original COTS competition rather than a new competition.
txhsdad: “It’s amazing to me that Ares I/V ended up taking so long and costing so much, since (as far as I understand) the whole point was to use existing shuttle boosters and stuff to build them. I understand the difference between cost plus and fixed fee, but man — it still boggles.”
It wasn’t just the difference between cost plus and fixed fee. The COTS approach also involves commercial “skin in the game”, which adds to the resources that method has compared to a similar sized government cost-plus investment.
Also, Ares I/Ares V didn’t use existing shuttle boosters and stuff. They changed quite a lot, and of course they are 2 separate rockets developed in series, resulting in a long, expensive development path. A sidemount would be closer to using existing shuttle boosters and stuff, and probably would have been a lot cheaper and quicker to build than Ares I/V. A sidemount for cargo paired with multiple COTS-D competitors for crew would have made a lot of sense (given political factors favoring Shuttle derived lifters) back in 2005.
The shuttle was prohibitively expensive, anything kludged/derived from it would be even more so. By far the cheapest shuttle derived vehicle I have seen is – the shuttle. It would have been far cheaper to keep flying than try to develop either of Ares I/V – which says rather a lot.
Shuttle derived vehicles are inherently a dead end – tantamount to trying to develop a modern low cost Mini using gold plated parts designed 40 years ago, the rest of the world has long since moved on.
Red,
Is that an RFP you are quoting, or just someone’s policy speech? If the latter its just what it is hoped the program will be like.
Also please stopping spreading the myth that ISS would have ended in 2015 without Obama’s policy. Unlike Shuttle the ISS is owned by the all ISS partners, not just the U.S. and by law ALL of them would need to be in agreement to deorbit it. Very unlikely given Russia’s interest in it. That is why the ISS will be in orbit until a systems failure, or a accumulation of systems failures, makes it uninhabitable.
ISS may not have ended in 2015, but US participation in it would have without a major infusion of $$$.
It seems to me that the problem most people have with FY11 is that is is so different from this administrations’ position on just about everything else. They therefore are either in a state of disbelief or looking for the man behind the curtain, i.e. the ulterior motive. That would appear to be the thought process behind the “killing HSF” line.
FWIW, I like FY11. The tech development is way past overdue. Aeronautics and SMDs’ budgets get some sanity back in them. The Centennial Challenges get more money. COTS-style commercial crew is funded. There are funds for facilities maintenance and modernization (also way past overdue).
Just my .02…
One of the factors in the Ares cost has to have been the labor cost. I was working for a client where there were a lot of old-timers who had worked on the Saturn boosters in the 60s. All of a sudden, these people left with virtually no notice, upsetting both the client and their contract firms. The reason? Companies working on these projects were looking for people with their experience and were paying wonderful rates, 2-3 times as much as they were getting at this particular client.
Most people would think that these rates were outrageous, and they have a point, but to a long time contractor like me, it was great, because the client had to raise its rates to keep people onboard.
As far as the conservative web sites go as far as space policy is concerned, especially the neo-con lairs, I have found that their ignorance of history is exceeded only by their ignorance of science, technology and engineering. While I’m not a fan of the Kossacks, they seem to have a better grasp on science than does, say, Human Events or Hot Air/Townhall. Chronicles and Taki do pretty good jobs, but they rarely examine things outside of the social sciences.
Whereas we could have had COTS-D in FY2011 under the current direction. And it would have had multiple winners and been fixed priced just as COTS was.
I’ll echo red and say this far from certain and I’ll add that it could still happen, especially if there is a continuing resolution and if Obama wants to create additional facts on the ground. ADA has shown he is willing to do that.
I hope that SpaceX and New Space do not get painted with the failure of the Obama regime
Not likely. Businessman often have pictures of themselves with a president. Their success usually has much more to do with business than it does with politics.
Does VASIMR need a nuclear power source? Or will advanced solar power do?
You need both regardless of VASIMR. We shouldn’t be stingy with power. Space is THE one place where the wackos shouldn’t be able to limit nuclear power.
Ares is a mistake regardless of administration or the plan going forward. I think space will be commercialized greater regardless, but it makes sense for the government to promote that (or at least not hinder) with the best thing being a base (and bases further out) as soon as they can be justified (I’d set a really low bar for justification, because the earth will hugely benefit from a larger economic sphere.)
A variation of a saying that is often attributed to Churchill (incorrectly, Google informs me) seems apt:
Any space enthusiast who is under 25, and is not an HLV enthusiast, has no heart; and any space enthusiast who is over 35, and is not opposed to HLVs, has no brains.
G. Clark,
[[[ISS may not have ended in 2015, but US participation in it would have without a major infusion of $$$.]]]
NASA participation may have, but that says nothing of private flights to it. Indeed, a Russian dominated ISS partnership would likely have made ISS very attractive to private ventures, so in retrospect that may have been a good thing for New Space, perhaps even better then commercial crew will be.
Although COTS-D may be part of a CR in 2011 it will have much more of an uphill fight now given its become the “enemy” of NASA HSF in the eyes of several key members of Congress thanks to the new policy.
Martijn Meijering Says:
[[[Any space enthusiast who is under 25, and is not an HLV enthusiast, has no heart; and any space enthusiast who is over 35, and is not opposed to HLVs, has no brains.]]]
Which proves my point on how extreme rhetoric is being used to divide the space community and prevent rational debate.
…it will have much more of an uphill fight now given its become the “enemy” of NASA HSF in the eyes of several key members of Congress thanks to the new policy.
It would have been a problem even under the old policy. Ares’ budget, technical and schedule problems weren’t going to go away, regardless of the policy. COTS D was always going to look better, and more so as time went on, and make more enemies of the porkmeisters.
Rand,
Yep, but they might have done it to keep the New Space advocates out of their hair. Now they don’t even have that incentive.
Tom
Although COTS-D may be part of a CR in 2011 it will have much more of an uphill fight now given its become the “enemy” of NASA HSF in the eyes of several key members of Congress thanks to the new policy.
Over on NSF.com there was speculation that in the event of a continuing resolution NASA could unilaterally decide to fund SpaceX’s COTS-D option without needing further approval from Congress. There is funding for COTS in the 2010 budget and that same funding would be available under a CR. Since the COTS-D option has already been negotiated and because it would fall under the same line item, the CR funding could be used for that. If you combine that with the ADA maneuver and a continuation of Griffin’s already authorised scorched earth policy (get rid of LC-39A, the orbiters, the SSMEs, the ET barge, the ET tooling) Obama would be creating new facts on the ground.
Which proves my point on how extreme rhetoric is being used to divide the space community and prevent rational debate.
I’ve certainly tried to engage people in rational debate, but it seems as if all I’m hearing is a set of rationalisations.
Unfortunately, I’ve been driven to the conclusion that a HUGE fraction of the opinions on this issue, depend on who the opinion-holder voted for in the presidential election. I’m not sure where to go from there, but there it is.
I might be the only space geek in the universe to admit this, but I have no clue how to build a goddamned rocket, and nobody hired me to build one. I hope rockets continue to get built, is all. I watch the politics going on behind this stuff, and try to judge who’s going to do something and who’s putting on a show.
That’s all I’ve got.